The Power Of Pan-Canadian Cooperation

Education and Advocacy Read how the Canadian Blood Services is helping the blood and organ shortage across the country.

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Altruistic kidney donors like Nathalie — donors who donate a kidney to someone they don’t know — have a big impact on reducing the number of patients on the organ donation wait-list. Photo: Canadian Blood Services

Dr. Graham Sher

CEO, Canadian Blood Services

Organ donation and transplantation has the power to saves lives, improve health, and return patients to a productive life.

We know Canada’s donation and transplantation system is improving, and one of the contributors to this success is effective collaboration among health system partners through newly established co-operative programs.

As a leader in this collaborative exchange, Canadian Blood Services proudly works with organ donation organizations, clinical transplant groups, and other key stakeholders to evolve knowledge, policy, and technology related to donation and transplantation in Canada.

In addition to increasing donation and transplantation rates, this work improves the integrity, safety, and transparency of the national system, ensuring the patients who need transplants most — no matter where they live — can get them. Despite this progress, there still is work to do.

In operating and improving the capacity of the Canadian Transplant Registry (CTR) — a digital technology that links organ donors with potential recipients — we have seen first-hand how working together builds a stronger system. The sharing of kidneys beyond provincial borders is now a reality thanks to this pan-Canadian cooperation. Over the past seven years, the CTR and its integrated programs (Kidney Paired Donation and the Highly-Sensitized Patient Kidney program) have enabled over 800 kidney transplants that might have otherwise never occurred.

Organs are a scarce resource in high demand. Until we stop preventable deaths of those on a transplant waiting list, our collective work is far from done. Together, we will continue the work to save the lives of more patients.